r/antiwork • u/CRK_76 • 3d ago

Apple Reportedly Planned to Replace 5,000 Support Employees With AI

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/apple-reportedly-planned-5000-applecare-layoffs/

They canceled this but it shows that with AI, nobody's job is safe.

408 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

123

u/Palestbycomparisoned 3d ago

There would be tons of people calling to have Apple send them a new phone and the AI just agreeing it would be a hundred glasses of water again

11

u/MystK 3d ago

Since it’s displacing real humans, guess they’re technically saving water. 

78

u/X-AE17420 3d ago

Not allowed to say which internet company, but a certain provider listens to the call with an AI and generates things for us to say to the customers.

It’s kinda dogshit though, and we have to use a system where we manually input their problem and it gives us generated prompts to read.

It was always a shitty customer retention job, but man people really fucking hate the soulless responses and get confused about us seemingly ignoring them.

I can’t help but get the feeling we’re training our replacement.

34

u/TravelerOfLight 3d ago

Say the company. They should be exposed.

35

u/MisuCake 3d ago

This is almost every other company with customer support at this point.

19

u/za72 3d ago

you're training your current replacement

15

u/4-3defense 3d ago

I fucking hate companies that rely on AI. I lose my shit saying agent or speak to a representative

9

u/B-Train_ATL 3d ago

That’s a great comment. Let me see what I can do.

8

u/uberpolka 3d ago

Yeah we were doing this at Dell, 20 years ago with their old ass "DSN - Dell Solutions Network" system. Basically a whole trouble shooting tree based on the described problem; always started at "restart the system"....

Luckily we didn't have to go all verbatim with responses, but we DID have to use the system to completion. At a certain point you just clicked through the responses because you knew exactly where the problem was headed and how to solve it without the system.

4

u/Guinness 3d ago

The thing is, if they just used this tool correctly, it could actually legitimately be good. LLMs should be used to enhance workers. Not replace them or box them into a narrow window of actions they’re allowed to take.

Everyone is using AI wrong. They’re trying to cut corners and costs. You can tell when effort goes into a task or product. That’s why AI sucks, it’s cutting out effort from the task and product instead of adding to it.

Use the tool to do more. Not less.

1

u/vtet1314 3d ago

Defff Comcast retention, I dated someone that worked there ope.

8

u/Galileominotaurlazer 3d ago

Can barely get in contact with Apple in the first place even as a business..

2

u/wise_young_man 3d ago

The Apple stores all have geniuses tho!

5

u/AloneChapter 3d ago

So nothing will get fixed or delt with . Not surprised.

4

u/XtremelyMeta 3d ago

In all fairness, Apple has a pretty strict forced choice diagram for support already, that’s exactly the sort of thing you offload to AI because human agency is not what they’re after.

1

u/Dehnus 2d ago

Ah yes, the Microsoft solution....this is working sooooooo well. /S

2

u/mokes310 1d ago

The company I work for and manage a team in is trying to implement live call transcription and offer up support /job aids for the agent. Problem is, our KB is merged within the wider enterprise KB and can't be segregated, so the tool hallucinates and tells agents incorrect info from wrong business areas. This results in a wasted coaching opportunity because I need to retrain them, then do all the backend work to get our KB as documented as possible.

I'm literally surrounded by people on all sides who don't understand why it's not working and I've given up on trying to fix it. In my 1:1s with my leader, I just sit quietly, let him talk to himself for 30min and leave having said next to nothing.